Voice of America journalistic standards and editorial decisions are discussed along with general media issues.

08 July 2008

Soldiers Pretending to Be Journalists?

Isn’t anyone out there concerned about the potential hazard posed to real reporters when soldiers masquerade as journalists?

We ask because we haven’t seen any expressions of worry from major journalist organizations since it was revealed that the Colombian special forces who took part in that dramatic and successful hostage rescue last week pretended to be both aid workers and a TV crew.

“By having soldiers pose as journalists and aid workers in order to gain access to the hostages, the Colombian government has increased the already high risks faced by legitimate reporters and NGO workers. In a country that is already one of the most dangerous places in the world in which to work as a journalist or a defender of human rights, the armed actors will now be even more suspicious of anyone claiming to work in those fields.”

1 comment:

Yes it is quite dangerous to journalists, and has happened before, e.g. in Afghanistan.

There operatives of either the Taliban regime or Al Qaeda also posed as journalists to suicide-bomb the leader of the Northern Alliance (the UN-recognised government) in Afghanistan in 2001.

I read British soldiers did something potentially damaging to neutrality in the 1990s in Bosnia. SAS troops posed as Red Cross officials to capture a suspected Serb war criminal who was director of a hospital.

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The Voice of America, which first went on the air in 1942, is a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government. VOA broadcasts more than 1,000 hours of news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 125 million people. Programs are produced in 45 languages. The VOA Media Watch, formerly called the VOA News Blog, discusses the editorial integrity and quality of VOA content and responds to inquiries, comments and complaints from the general public and others related to that content. The Media Watch thus serves as a public source of information, explanation and analysis regarding VOA's journalistic standards and practices. General media issues are also discussed.

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